In large commercial and industrial settings such as hospitals, hotels, factories and the like, cleaning, disinfecting, and other health and maintenance functions requiring a major organized effort to ensure that these operations are carried out efficiently and economically. By way of example only, in large hotels and hospitals, it is not unusual to have one individual dedicated to simply refilling handheld spray bottles with cleaning and disinfecting agents. This means of course that each day or at regular intervals, the empty or partially empty spray bottles must be collected at a central location and then refilled. Collecting, refilling, and again distributing the bottles to worksites takes a toll on the efficient operation of such health and maintenance functions. Accordingly, it would be most beneficial if the amount of effort and time used to refill such handheld sprayers could be reduced.
Additionally, in such commercial and industrial settings, large scale mixing, diluting, and dispensing functions are carried out in specialized locations. Such functions can be accomplished, for example, at dishwashing or laundry stations, food dispensing stations, paint or epoxy mixing stations, and at a myriad of other stations. For such functions, concentrates such as soaps, disinfectants, paint pigments, epoxies, and the like, are delivered to the facility and then are mixed or diluted in a proportioning and dispensing system. Such concentrates can include, for example only, a block of soap that is to be placed in a large industrial dishwasher or other cleaner. In such situations the soap is dispensed into a stream of water by simply having the water directed over the block of soap. Such a system can understandably be wasteful in that the correct proportion of soap or other concentrate to the diluting fluid is not accurately measured.
Accordingly, there is a need to develop a system which can be used both as a handheld proportioner or as a large stationary proportioner for dispensing and proportioning substances in an accurate and economical way. Such system would be economical as only the exact desired mixture would be dispensed. Further, the system would need to be designed so that no one could come in contact with any concentrate.